Capper x Katzki - Man vs. Machine
When mysterious machines appear in the Australian outback, a remote mining community confronts its own history of industrial boom and bust.
In the midst of the Australian outback, a strange yellow machine scratches at the earth. There is no operator; no engineer in a plastic helmet. The object—more a sculpture than a machine—is the product of British artist James Capper, who joins filmmaker Alexander George in this hybrid art film; a project from Edward Campbell, founder of Forth Arts, which organized the residency. As Campbell explains, the project "aims to bring artists working in different disciplines and from different places together and enable to collaborate with each other, alongside a local community."
The ultimate brief of the residency was to create a film that explored the relationship between people, machines and landscape. "We had an idea of the type of film we wanted to make but, as with all great expeditions, you never know what will happen until you get out there. We had to work in a very agile, collaborative and flexible way." Shooting in unfamiliar and raw light, on 35mm film, in the heat and dust of the desert, was an acute challenge. "There were some very tense moments—it was incredibly exciting."
Beyond the mechanical, it was important for Campbell to cast among the local community—"to represent the human element." And so, the crew "cast members of the local community and they each added their own character to the film. The film is their's. It belongs to Broken Hill."
And watch the final film, BLUE FRAME, here:
https://www.nowness.com/story/blue-frame-james-capper-alexander-george-forth-arts